Phonological awareness refers to the ability to understand and to manipulate the sound structure in a language. It covers the sound structure of spoken words and is separate from the actual meaning of those words. Children and students develop phonological awareness as they study and learn a spoken language. Phonological awareness includes syllable awareness and onset-rime awareness. The smallest unit of speech and the most difficult aspect of phonological awareness is phonemic awareness. Phonemes are the individual sounds in speech. Different spoken languages use different numbers of phonemes from a low of 10 phonemes up to 140 phonemes. English has about 44 phonemes, and Spanish has about 24 phonemes. Phonemic awareness refers to the ability of a child or student to think about and to manipulate these sounds. Typically, this is the last and deepest understanding of spoken language acquired by children and students.
Not all students develop phonological awareness and phonemic awareness, which is a component of phonological awareness, easily or at the same rate. Many different methods have been developed to aid children and students in developing phonological awareness. However, many of these systems do not focus on phonemic awareness in particular. In addition, these methods are not provided in a method that is enjoyable to the students or that leverages the inherent desire of children and students to participate in games or in social networking opportunities. Therefore, methods and systems are needed that focus on teaching phonemic awareness to children and students in an environment that captures an inherent desire to play games and to interact in groups.